highest kill ratio (1 Viewer)

[andrewgeorge]

Wrong impression...poor eye sight ?

Presumably not poor eye sight if we're talking about aircrew!

No, I mean limited visibility, limited awareness, misapprehension, distraction, physical distortion of senses, overoptimism.

Let's say I'm a fighter ace and I close in on an enemy aircraft at the tail end of a formation and fire an accurate burst that surely scores hits. As I flash by and pull into a zoom climb, I see that his engine belches smoke and he dives out of control toward the earth. A victory. I say so over radio. Another member of my flight says he also got one on the initial pass. I reach the top of my climb, bank over, and dive back in to the scattered enemy planes. I get on the tail of one of them, and he tightens down the turn forcing a high angle deflection shot. I pull lead and fire another long burst. I see big pieces of his tail assembly break off as my rounds find their mark. I shot the tail off his plane and he's done for. I check my six and I see an enemy aircraft trying to pull a lead on me, so I try to jink him with a snap roll and dive into a split S. I'm pressed hard into the floor of the cockpit as my vision dims and the roar of the plane softens, on the verge of blacking out, but I stay conscious. As the blood returns to my head, out of the corner of my eye I see a fireball as an aircraft trailing black smoke hits the ground. Probably the one I flamed on my first pass. When we get back I claim two certain, another pilot claims one certain, and a third claims one probable that was in tatters when he had to break off due to fuel. One of our pilots didn't return. Four kills to one loss. We can't afford to lose any pilots, but at least we gave worse than we got.

Now let's say that that first claim was in error. Despite the tracers passing close by the nose of his plane, not one of my rounds hit. The enemy pilot only saw us at the last moment, and instinctively opened his throttle all the way, running rich and spewing a cloud of black sooty exhaust. At the same time, he maneuvered violently, diving to escape. Unknown to me, he actually returned to base undamaged.

It was also unknown to the other pilot in my flight who shot at that same plane and who, like me, was sure his hits had caused an engine fire. Two erroneous claims.

Now, also unknown to me at the time, when we pulled away into a zoom climb, one of the enemy planes got a good burst off at our tail end fighter and scored hits on his wing tank. His kite went up in flames and he hit the silk.

The second plane I did in fact hit with the last few rounds of my high angle deflection shot and one of my cannon rounds did explode on his vertical stabilizer, sending shrapnel flying and blasting small, shiny pieces of aluminum from his aircraft. However, since his aircraft was below my nose for the shot itself, I didn't see that most of the burst missed and I had only a brief glimpse of the results. Since his wingman cleared me from his tail, I never got another look at him. His plane was hit, but not seriously damaged and remained flyable. Three erroneous claims.

The plane that hit the ground was actually one of ours; the one that was lit up on the initial pass. Our pilot was still floating to earth eight thousand feet overhead, and he was going to end up a POW. But I didn't know that because I didn't really see the plane itself, just the explosion when it hit the ground. After all, I pulling a high-G defensive maneuver at the time.

The second plane I hit was engaged by two more fighters from my squadron. Although his plane was damaged, he managed to avoid their guns in a six-minute running dogfight that felt like it lasted an hour, until both of our boys got the call to break it off and head home. Our two pilots were both sure they had scored some hits, and the visible damage to his plane looked bad the last they saw him. Except they hadn't scored a single additional hit, the enemy pilot did return to base, and his plane was actually in flyable condition within days. Four erroneous claims.

So our squadron's ledger: 4 victories, 1 missing/unknown.
Reality: 0 victories, 1 loss.

My claims: 2 victories
Reality: 1 enemy plane damaged.

I'm not lying. Neither is anyone else in my squadron. But we just claimed four planes shot down on a day when every enemy aircraft returned safely to base.

 

[GregP]

I've made these arguments many times in here and they fall on people convinced that loss data are somehow WAY more accurate than victory claim data. Since both types of data are taken down on paper (this is WWII, recall), data can be lost, can become unreadable due to water damage, and can become damaged so that some can be read while other parts of the same page cannot be read.

This makes loss data nearly as susceptible to errors as claims data.

If we have a loss number, then we likely have at least that many lost, and likely more that could be positively identified since some data was lost or damaged. We can't even usually agree on how many aircraft were built. much less lost!

Lots of room for wigglle-type accuracy. That is, the numbers are in the ballpark, but will likely never be exact.

Sounds like communication with your wife, doesn't it?

It's like giving the Marines, the Army, and the Air Force an order to secure the building.
The Marines destroy it.
The Army locks it up so nobody can go in or out.
And the Air Force takes out a lease on the building at their option.

I omitted the Navy becasue the building doesn't float, but they'd likely throw it in the brig, if they were ashore at the time.

 

[Juha3]

I disagree; loss records indicate that aircraft had vanished—they were lost. Claiming an aerial victory meant that the pilots believed they had dealt a fatal blow to their target, or had witnessed the aircraft they engaged plummet to the ground—and they were certain that it was not an aircraft brought down by another pilot. Such claims generally tended to become less accurate during large-scale aerial engagements. The British realized this after the Battle of Britain, when they discovered that the results achieved by large squadron formations—the so-called "Big Wings"—were nowhere near as impressive as the pilots' victory claims had suggested.

 

[wrathofatlantis]

I disagree; loss records indicate that aircraft had vanished—they were lost. Claiming an aerial victory meant that the pilots believed they had dealt a fatal blow to their target, or had witnessed the aircraft they engaged plummet to the ground—and they were certain that it was not an aircraft brought down by another pilot. Such claims generally tended to become less accurate during large-scale aerial engagements. The British realized this after the Battle of Britain, when they discovered that the results achieved by large squadron formations—the so-called "Big Wings"—were nowhere near as impressive as the pilots' victory claims had suggested.

Absolutely. Failed to return is always radically different than claims for a reason.

Even more significant, it correlates better across multiple viewpoints. Say the Corsair and the Zero being 1:1 in the first 12 months (as per Osprey's "Corsair vs A6M" last chapter study) and then an 11 kill Corsair ace losing 3 airframes to enemy action (5 in total) for 8 Zero kills. A long way from 11:1...

To invoke water damage or lost documents is like saying a blood test tells you nothing unless you test all the blood...

 

[topspeed]

I've made these arguments many times in here and they fall on people convinced that loss data are somehow WAY more accurate than victory claim data. Since both types of data are taken down on paper (this is WWII, recall), data can be lost, can become unreadable due to water damage, and can become damaged so that some can be read while other parts of the same page cannot be read.

This makes loss data nearly as susceptible to errors as claims data.

If we have a loss number, then we likely have at least that many lost, and likely more that could be positively identified since some data was lost or damaged. We can't even usually agree on how many aircraft were built. much less lost!

Lots of room for wigglle-type accuracy. That is, the numbers are in the ballpark, but will likely never be exact.

Sounds like communication with your wife, doesn't it?

It's like giving the Marines, the Army, and the Air Force an order to secure the building.
The Marines destroy it.
The Army locks it up so nobody can go in or out.
And the Air Force takes out a lease on the building at their option.

I omitted the Navy becasue the building doesn't float, but they'd likely throw it in the brig, if they were ashore at the time.

I recall Illu Juutilainen had 95 confirmed kills but he claimed he shot 128....but his wingman had 5 kills. I have talked with both men....and also Hans Wind and the man whose kills were only confirmed by a bystander 47 years later ( had there been a witness he would have received the coveted Mannerheim Cross ).

I am saying there were insane amount of P-39s accompanying the Il-2s....but russian bots here say there were none.

Where did the 14 500 Airacobras go...if none were over Karelian Isthmus....who killed Vesa Pallasvuo...he engaded a formation of 50 Airacobras alone and scored two....before being shot down and killed...several others like Sarjamo dared to meet these formations ?

 

[GrauGeist]

The enemy pilot only saw us at the last moment, and instinctively opened his throttle all the way, running rich and spewing a cloud of black sooty exhaust.

That sounds dramatic, but in reality, the "cloud" of rich exhaust is momentary and dissipates quickly.

A stricken fighter will emit a growing trail of black or white smoke that is extremely obvious.

 

[bf109xxl]

I recall Illu Juutilainen had 95 confirmed kills but he claimed he shot 128....

"Confirmed" != "verified". Many of Juutilainen's claims are not confirmed by records of enemy losses. His personal overclaim rate is relatively high. I believe his actual victories amount to no more than half of his claims.

I am saying there were insane amount of P-39s accompanying the Il-2s....

Who cares what you personally say? If you want to prove something, provide quotes and links to sources and documents. But please spare us the AI slop.

but russian bots here say there were none.

Of course, everyone who doesn't consider your fantasies to be serious information is a Russian bot.

Where did the 14 500 Airacobras go...

...of the fewer than 9,600 produced!

if none were over Karelian Isthmus....who killed Vesa Pallasvuo...he engaded a formation of 50 Airacobras

Come on, at least 100500!

 

[Juha3]

I recall Illu Juutilainen had 95 confirmed kills but he claimed he shot 128....but his wingman had 5 kills. I have talked with both men....and also Hans Wind and the man whose kills were only confirmed by a bystander 47 years later ( had there been a witness he would have received the coveted Mannerheim Cross ).

I am saying there were insane amount of P-39s accompanying the Il-2s....but russian bots here say there were none.

Where did the 14 500 Airacobras go...if none were over Karelian Isthmus....who killed Vesa Pallasvuo...he engaded a formation of 50 Airacobras alone and scored two....before being shot down and killed...several others like Sarjamo dared to meet these formations ?

Who said that there was none over Karelian Isthmus? The number was 111. Where you got the number 14,500 Airacobras, the production was 9,558 or 9,588 aircraft, Soviets received 4,719 - 4,952 Airacobras according to Red Stars Vol. 4 Lend-Lease Aircraft in Russia by Carl-Fredrik Geust & Gennadiy Petrov. More were sent but there were losses during the transfer.
Most of Soviet Airacobras in 1944 were in Belarus and south of it, where the main battles were fought, but air arms of the Soviet fleets also had them as also the PVOs like the Leningrad area PVO, whose Airacobras participated the Soviet Summer offensive agaist the Finns during the Summer of 1944 and are included to the 111 given above.

 

[FulmenTheFinn]

bf109xxl J Juha3 I think you're wasting your time and energy with topspeed; he's too far gone. It's best to let it go. Just my two cents.

 

[bf109xxl]

Soviets received 4,719 - 4,952 Airacobras according to Red Stars Vol. 4 Lend-Lease Aircraft in Russia by Carl-Fredrik Geust & Gennadiy Petrov

According to Kotelnikov, in May 1945 the Soviet Air Force (including air defense) had 3,078 P-39s; however, he states that losses to May 1, 1945, amounted to 2,202 aircraft, which contradicts the total number of aircraft received (4,952). It is possible that the data on the number of "cobras" in service was not entirely accurate - for example, some aircraft were written off by units but did not appear in the monthly reports.

 

[GregP]

Have to agree that general statements don't get it. Numbers with referencers are MUCH better. Summaries of actual combat reports are good.

I, too, have spoken with WWII and Korean War combat veteran pilots.

According to them, the claims were almost universally, but not exactly always, made in good faith. That is, the enemy was "going down, on fire or exploded / bailed out." They had no comment about other people making a claim for the same aircraft becasue the "other people" were their own formation mates. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means the subject never came up in conversation. There was always the occasional glory hound, like Stachel in "The Blue Max," but they weren't exactly rampant.

I have pretty good claims files, world-wide, but I make no suggestion they are 100%% confirmed. They are, in fact, "claims." Claims are about the best numbers we have to compare one air force against another since the only rather comprehensive review of WWII claims that was made and published is the USAAF Report #85. WWII was expensive enough and no other military seemingly wanted to spend more on the war after it was over studying aerial victories. If they did, I haven't seen it except for rpeort #85, whiuch is in a completely useless format (dot matrix printer pages) for study.

Can't seemingly do OCR on it, either. At least, I can't. Tried. Too many errors as the dot matrix printer wasn't exactly seemingly a good one. The repport looks like it was made in Lower Slobovia.

 

[topspeed]

Have to agree that general statements don't get it. Numbers with referencers are MUCH better. Summaries of actual combat reports are good.

I, too, have spoken with WWII and Korean War combat veteran pilots.

According to them, the claims were almost universally, but not exactly always, made in good faith. That is, the enemy was "going down, on fire or exploded / bailed out." They had no comment about other people making a claim for the same aircraft becasue the "other people" were their own formation mates. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means the subject never came up in conversation. There was always the occasional glory hound, like Stachel in "The Blue Max," but they weren't exactly rampant.

I have pretty good claims files, world-wide, but I make no suggestion they are 100%% confirmed. They are, in fact, "claims." Claims are about the best numbers we have to compare one air force against another since the only rather comprehensive review of WWII claims that was made and published is the USAAF Report #85. WWII was expensive enough and no other military seemingly wanted to spend more on the war after it was over studying aerial victories. If they did, I haven't seen it except for rpeort #85, whiuch is in a completely useless format (dot matrix printer pages) for study.

Can't seemingly do OCR on it, either. At least, I can't. Tried. Too many errors as the dot matrix printer wasn't exactly seemingly a good one. The repport loos like it was made in Lower Slobovia.

I actually talked with flight master Illu Juutilainen only once...as we went to see a movie in Helsinki in 1997 and got seated side by side. The movie was called " Air Force One "....which was very propriate in this case.

1991 I was talking with Captain Hans Wind on the phone regarding my hobby as R/C combat chief in Finland. I recall he did not much appreciate the Me-109 G as an aircraft...with unclean aerodynamics. He wished me well. Complained about the wounds he had gotten and was still in agony. I think some Airacobra shell pieces were still buried in his torso from his last flight.

Most inspiring and exemplary airman was flight master Manu Fräntilä...Illus wing man. He was able to describe how he got one Yak-9 in air battle over Karelian Isthmus. I had no idea Me 109 G was able to what he had done. He never counted his kills...his kills were recorded by his fellows.

I called Kyösti Karhila only after reading about his kills over 5 Il-2...he was very pragmatic ( and old ) but he was very taken as he realized his feat was witnessed by a bystander.

 

[topspeed]

According to Kotelnikov, in May 1945 the Soviet Air Force (including air defense) had 3,078 P-39s; however, he states that losses to May 1, 1945, amounted to 2,202 aircraft, which contradicts the total number of aircraft received (4,952). It is possible that the data on the number of "cobras" in service was not entirely accurate - for example, some aircraft were written off by units but did not appear in the monthly reports.

Maybe they counted also the P-63s.

 

[topspeed]

bf109xxl J Juha3 I think you're wasting your time and energy with topspeed; he's too far gone. It's best to let it go. Just my two cents.

Who said that there was none over Karelian Isthmus? The number was 111. Where you got the number 14,500 Airacobras, the production was 9,558 or 9,588 aircraft, Soviets received 4,719 - 4,952 Airacobras according to Red Stars Vol. 4 Lend-Lease Aircraft in Russia by Carl-Fredrik Geust & Gennadiy Petrov. More were sent but there were losses during the transfer.
Most of Soviet Airacobras in 1944 were in Belarus and south of it, where the main battles were fought, but air arms of the Soviet fleets also had them as also the PVOs like the Leningrad area PVO, whose Airacobras participated the Soviet Summer offensive agaist the Finns during the Summer of 1944 and are included to the 111 given above.

Sorry...I realized last nite I was talking about the entire lend lease numbers...instead of the 5000 Airacobras.

 

[CHen10]

Have to agree that general statements don't get it. Numbers with referencers are MUCH better. Summaries of actual combat reports are good.

I, too, have spoken with WWII and Korean War combat veteran pilots.

According to them, the claims were almost universally, but not exactly always, made in good faith. That is, the enemy was "going down, on fire or exploded / bailed out." They had no comment about other people making a claim for the same aircraft becasue the "other people" were their own formation mates. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means the subject never came up in conversation. There was always the occasional glory hound, like Stachel in "The Blue Max," but they weren't exactly rampant.

I have pretty good claims files, world-wide, but I make no suggestion they are 100%% confirmed. They are, in fact, "claims." Claims are about the best numbers we have to compare one air force against another since the only rather comprehensive review of WWII claims that was made and published is the USAAF Report #85. WWII was expensive enough and no other military seemingly wanted to spend more on the war after it was over studying aerial victories. If they did, I haven't seen it except for rpeort #85, whiuch is in a completely useless format (dot matrix printer pages) for study.

Can't seemingly do OCR on it, either. At least, I can't. Tried. Too many errors as the dot matrix printer wasn't exactly seemingly a good one. The repport looks like it was made in Lower Slobovia.

No. Just because it is a confirmed victory claim does NOT automatically mean a plane was in fact destroyed. Overclaiming is real.

 

[CHen10]

I called Kyösti Karhila only after reading about his kills over 5 Il-2...he was very pragmatic ( and old ) but he was very taken as he realized his feat was witnessed by a bystander.

You have already been explained this multiple times now

 

[topspeed]

No. Just because it is a confirmed victory claim does NOT automatically mean a plane was in fact destroyed. Overclaiming is real.

Also under claiming was real.